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By Billal Rahman
Immigration Reporter
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A majority of Americans support legal voluntary euthanasia for terminally ill patients who want to end their life, according to a new Gallup poll.
Seven in 10 Americans, 71 percent, believe medical doctors should be "allowed by law to end a patient's life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it."
It would be reserved for individuals who are terminally ill and experiencing intense pain, with no hope of recovery.
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Doctor-assisted suicide, which is used to describe patients ending their own lives with the aid of a physician, has slightly less support.
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According to the poll, 66 percent of Americans agree that doctors should "be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide" for terminal patients living in severe pain who request it.
The newly released data lines up with trends in Americans' attitudes toward the legality of euthanasia during the past decade. In a 1950 Gallup poll, 37 percent of Americans supported enacting legislation that would legalize the practice; since then, majorities have supported legislation.
Over two decades later, in 1973, a slight majority of 53 percent of Americans were in favor, demonstrating a shift in public attitudes toward euthanasia.
Between 1996 and 2014, 58 percent of Americans thought doctor-assisted suicide should be legal, compared with 65 percent since 2014.
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In the data gathered by Gallup, Democrats (79 percent) are more likely than Republicans (61 percent) or independents (72 percent) to support legal euthanasia.
New York is one of 19 states where lawmakers are considering bills that would legalize the practice. Passive euthanasia is legal in 10 states.
"Doctor-assisted suicide is legal in 11 U.S. jurisdictions under stringent requirements. No states currently allow euthanasia, but physicians are ethically allowed to withdraw life-sustaining treatment for a terminal patient should current interventions not facilitate the patient's quality of life," according to the study conducted by Gallup.
There appears to be a regional divide in attitudes, as respondents living in areas that allow doctor-assisted suicide are also among the most likely to say it is moral.
The majority of states offering end-of-life options are regions on the West Coast. Sixty-six percent of residents in the West, compared to 57 percent of Americans in the East, say doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable.
However, despite the majority of Americans supporting legalizing euthanasia, anti-euthanasia advocacy groups strongly oppose the legislation.
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Ross Hendry, CEO of Christian Action Research and Education (CARE), told Newsweek that assisted suicide is "medically dangerous."
"People's views on this issue can be influenced significantly by language, as the latest Gallup Poll demonstrates. People in the U.S. understand that suicide is a tragedy to be avoided, and so they are less inclined to back 'assisted suicide' by doctors. This is why campaigners for the practice use the term 'assisted dying'. It obscures what is truly involved in the process and garners greater surface-level support.
"Assisted suicide is medically dangerous as well as ethically unsound. The drugs used compound the suffering of patients and loved ones watching on. When people understand what's involved, read about troubling cases and abuse, and see the extreme expansion of laws in some countries, their views can change quite radically.
"Instead of legalizing assisted suicide, which undermines human dignity and puts vulnerable groups at higher risk of abuse and harm, politicians should ensure that investment and infrastructure are in place to make high-quality palliative care accessible by all citizens."
David Albert Jones**,** Professor of Bioethics at the University of Oxford, told Newsweek: "It is dangerous to permit doctors to end people's lives—it leads to them doing so without consent, for example, in Belgium there were 1,000 per year."
Across the northern border in Canada, assisted dying was legalized in 2016 for mentally competent adults with an incurable medical condition.
Euthanasia is a procedure in which a doctor intentionally acts to end the life of a patient, and is also legal in other countries around the world, such as Australia, Columbia, and Spain.
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